


Clear-Story Windows

by Deannie



Series: Tails Inspired by Typos [4]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Halloween, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-11-10
Updated: 1997-11-10
Packaged: 2017-12-31 12:30:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One a lonely stretch of highway, Jim and Blair come upon a church... sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clear-Story Windows

**_October 31, 1997  
12:53 am_ **

"So what's going on in Vancouver that we just  _had_  to go up there for Halloween?" Jim asked.He and Blair hadn't felt like partaking in the usual Halloween parties back in Cascade, and Blair had come up with the idea to head up to Vancouver for the weekend.

"Oh man!" Blair was bouncing excitedly in his seat, and had been since he'd suggested this trip. "My friend Benny has the  _wildest_  party for Halloween, Jim. It's definitely a no-miss event."

"Uh-huh," Jim replied unenthusaistically.

"Come on, man," Blair retorted. "You'll love it, trust me."

"I just don't see why-- _shit!_  Hang on, Blair!"

The deer had come out of nowhere, and on the icy road, Jim knew they were heading for disaster. His arm shot out to grab his partner's midriff and, hopefully, offer the smaller man that extra measure of safety as the truck carreened off the road and into a snowdrift, fish-tailing violently as it did so.

 

"Sandburg?"

Jim looked his partner over carefully when the truck came to a stop. Blair's head had impacted with the side window, and he sprawled limply across the seat.

"Sandburg, come on, buddy... Blair?"

Blair sat up a little straighter, groaning as he came awake. "What the  _hell_  was that?"

"A deer," Jim explained apologetically. "I didn't see him coming until it was too late. It was either ram into him and total the truck, or..."

"Or try to get out of his way," Blair finished, putting a hand to his face in an attempt to stop the throbbing. The hand came away with blood and Jim went into protective mode.

"Let me see," he whispered, turning Blair's face toward him with a hand on his partner's chin. The goose egg that was forming didn't look too bad, and the bleeding was minor. "You okay?" Jim asked tensely, holding a hand in front of his partner's face. "How many fingers do you see?"

"Five," Blair shot back. "Two sticking up, and three folded in."

Jim smiled at the lame joke, and looked around them speculatively. They had ended up tail first in a five foot high snowdrift. Jim threw the truck into gear and tried to pull out. After a few minutes of spinning wheels, he knew they were stuck, but good.

"Stay here, Chief," he muttered quietly. "I'm going to take a look."

 

The snow was falling steadily again, and Jim had to concentrate just to get his bearings on where they were in relation to the road. A fair ways off was the answer he got, looking at the ice-covered drive more than fifty feet away.

He walked around to the back of the truck, and his heart fell. The last three feet of the bed had been swallowed by the snowdrift. This definitely called for a towtruck.

But of course, Jim's luck running as it so often did, the cellphone was having a problem getting a signal through the heavy snowfall. With a half-frozen sigh, he headed back to the cab where Blair sat shivering.

"How's the head?" Jim asked, closing the door carefully.

"Throbbing," Blair responded. "How's the truck?"

Jim smiled, chagrined. "Buried. And I can't get a cell for the phone in all this snow."

"So we wait for some nice passerby to pick us up, huh?" Blair snorted at their luck, and hunkered down in the growing cold of the truck's cab. "Run the heat, man," he griped. "It's freezing in here."

Jim watched his partner carefully. Granted, Blair had never been one for the cold, but it was barely chilly, the heat still hanging on from their drive. "You okay?" he asked again.

"I'm fine, man," Blair bit back, irritated. "Just turn on the heat, okay?"

"I can't do that, Chief," Jim explained patiently, turning around to rummage through the emergency supplies he always kept in the truck--just in case. He pulled out a blanket and offered it to his partner. "The tailend is buried. If I run the engine, we'll suffocate. The carbon monoxide has to go somewhere."

"Great," Blair groused, wrapping the blanket around himself and shivering all the same. "Just great."

Jim pulled his lover into his arms and tried to beat away the chill. "Don't worry, Chief. It's supposed to clear up tonight. I'll try the cellphone again later."

"Uh-huh."

* * *

Jim jumped awake as he heard the muted strains of some music floating through the air. Blair was still wrapped in his arms, but the anthropologist didn't wake as Jim tried to move to take a look outside.

There was light, farther off into the woods. If they could get to a house with a landline...

"Hey, Chief?" Jim shook his partner. "Blair, wake up, buddy. We have to move."

"Too cold to move," Blair muttered back, snuggling deeper into Jim's chest. "I'll just stay here."

Jim pulled away from his lover, bringing the younger man's face up so he could get a closer look. Blair's words had been slurred, and Jim wanted to make sure that it was just from his half-awake state.

What Jim saw wasn't very encouraging. The goose egg was ostrich-sized now, and the bruise was turning out to be truly spectacular.

"Blair, wake up."

The younger man groaned irritably in response.

"BLAIR!"

"What!?" Blair sat up, pulling away from Jim in disgust. "Can't a guy get  _any_  sleep around here?"

Jim sighed. Blair's eyes were clear, and, now that he was fully awake, his voice was clear as well. He was fine--but he was definitely freezing.

"Look, I saw what I think was a light a little farther into the woods," Jim explained. "If there's a house close by..."

"Can you hear anything?" Blair asked, his earlier irritation forgotten.

Jim listened carefully for a moment, again picking up the sound of music. He couldn't place it, but it sounded familiar. "Yeah, they're playing music."

"Good music?" Blair asked, a twinkle in his eyes.

Jim bristled good-naturedly. "Who cares! As long as they have a phone, I'd even listen to your jungle music."

"Ha ha," Blair responded, pulling the blanket tighter around himself as Jim opened the door. They both had to crawl out the driver's side, and Blair shivered more intensely as the cold wind hit him full force.

"You okay, Chief?"

"Jim," Blair replied wearily, turning toward the woods behind them. "Stop asking me that, okay? Now, where are we headed?"

Jim smiled, shook his head, and headed toward the music, and the faint light he could still barely see as it bounced off the fog in the trees.

* * *

They'd been walking for an hour, and while Jim could still hear the music, the light was gone. Still, he  _knew_  they were going in the right direction. They had to be.

"Jim?"

The detective looked up, zeroing in on his partner through the light snow. For all his talk about hating the cold, Blair was moving a lot faster than Jim was.  _Must be getting old, Jimmy boy,_  he told himself grimly, as he hurried to reach the top of the hill where his partner now stood.

"What is that?" Blair asked, reaching out a slightly shivering hand to point toward a dim structure in the dark.

Jim stared at it for a moment before the building announced itself. He slapped his partner on the back happily.

"A church in the snow, Chief." He rubbed cold, gloved hands together. "Let's go see if the pastor has some soup and a warm corner we can curl up in until this storm blows over."

 

But there was no pastor. There probably hadn't been in years. The doors hung slightly cockeyed on their hinges, and Jim had no problem forcing them open. Though his mother had never been much for practicing religion, Jim remembered early years of Mass on Christmas, and pushed down the guilt that, as a half-Catholic by birth, he felt instinctively.

"Kind of spooky, huh?" Blair asked, shivering as his body tried to adjust to the new, slightly warmer temperature. He grinned cheekily. "Perfect for Halloween."

"Churches aren't for Halloween, Chief," Jim muttered. But it was a good-natured mutter. This old abandoned church meant they wouldn't have to spend the night freezing in the truck.

"I thought you said you heard music?" Blair said quietly. His head was hurting again, and sleeping on the floor in an abandoned building didn't sit too well with him.

"I thought I did," Jim responded, looking around in confusion. He opened up his hearing, but the music he'd heard earlier was gone. He shook his head angrily.

"Well, at least it's a place to stay."

Others must have found this place in the past. In a prayer alcove just to the right of the sanctuary was a makeshift fireplace that had obviously been the final resting place of a number of the church's pews, some of which still stood, hunching precariously in the tired old structure.

"Come on, Chief," he suggested, rubbing his hands together again to warm them. "Let's get rid of a little of the chill."

"Start a fire?" Blair asked incredulously, watching his partner dismantle a rickety old bench and dig for his matches. The anthropologist tried to ignore the headache that was building again, but he wasn't having any luck. "Isn't that kind of sacreligious?"

Jim shurgged, using the old fire pit to start a bit of the kindling going. "God'll forgive us." He smiled warmly, obviously remembering something. "The church is a place of sanctuary, Chief. And God knows we need some of that right now."

Blair shook his aching head, kneeling beside his friend and breaking up more of the erstwhile pew. He really didn't know why this should bother him--hell, there was a church in this little village he'd been to in Peru where the farmers brought their goats in as a matter of course. Still, he felt a little wierd here.

"Chief?" Jim's curious call woke the anthropologist from his musings. "Are you going to help me start this fire, or are you just going to sit there shivering?"

Blair shook himself and began again his task of destroying the old pew. "Sorry, man. This is just too wierd."

Jim laughed, a welcome sound that reverberated thourghout the hallowed old structure. "Come on, Blair. I doubt there's been a mass said here for a couple of decades. The building's here, we might as well make use of it."

Blair shrugged, and added more fuel to the fire. After a few minutes, they had a cheery blaze going, and sat back to make use of their handiwork.

"You okay?" Jim asked after a few moments.

The younger man sighed. He was sick of the question. "Sure. Just a killer headache. You?"

Jim grunted an affirmative. "Come on over here, Chief. We might as well sleep. We can try to call a tow truck tomorrow if the weather clears tonight."

Blair moved over to him, offering half the blanket that he still held wrapped around himself. Jim cuddled his lover in his arms, and Blair felt the chill and the headache finally begin to wane.

"You comfy?" Jim asked, laughter in his voice.

"Yeah," Blair replied, letting loose a satisfied sigh. "Thanks, Jim. Goodnight."

"Night."

"...I love you."

Blair could almost hear the smile in his lover's voice. "I love you, too, Chief."

* * *

Jim woke sometime near five, and slipped away from his lover, wrapping the younger man more tightly in the blanket. The detective fed the fire a few more bits of wood, until the weary flames had perked up a bit, then stood and stretched himself.

He looked up at the windows, noting that the snow seemed to have stopped. Moonlight mixed with early dawn filtered in through the colored glass, and he tried to tune out the light from the fire to see the stories that had been painstakingly pieced together there.

The aisle windows were simply depictions of the twelve apostles, and Jim found himself delightfully proud that he could recognise most of them. Saint James the Elder with his scalloped shell, Saint John with his book...

The clerestory windows were a little harder to identify. It was obviously a narrative of some sort, but Jim's limited knowledge of Catholic stories wasn't giving him any help. He hadn't been made to go to bible study as a child, and what little he knew of Catholic iconography had been gleaned from one barely-acknowledged class in college. He smiled to himself, remembering the girl who'd given him such a crush that he was willing to suffer through that class just to get close to her.

Shaking his memories away, he looked at the windows more closely. They were obviously about the tall soldier that appeared in each one of them, and Jim tried to follow the story, wondering with a little interest where it would lead.

In the first window, the soldier was seen walking his horse down a nondescript street. The second showed a small man in what Jim vaguely remembered were supposed to be leper's robes, sitting by the side of the road as the soldier walked past. Then, the soldier kneeled beside the leper, and, in the final window on that side, the soldier was walking beside his horse again, the leper perched on the roan's broad back.

Jim wondered now at the name of the church he and his lover had stumbled on. He didn't recognise the saint, or the story, and turned to the other windows, looking for the rest of the tale.

In the first window on the other side, the soldier and his burdened horse now stood before a rude shack, where a small woman was waiting, her hands clasped in what Jim assumed was joy. The next window showed the soldier carrying the leper into a little room, and the third showed the soldier caring for the obviously dying leper.

The last window on the northern side of the building was a little surprising to him, and he opened up his vision even more, just to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

The soldier now lay in the same bed, his arms wrapped gently around the leper, who was either sleeping or dead.

Kind of a strange image to see in a Catholic church, Jim mused silently, turning back to his lover and their waiting fire with a shrug. There had to be more behind the story, he decided, and Blair was sure to know at least some of it.

It often amazed Jim how much his partner knew about so many different things. It had enabled them to crack some tough cases in the past, but, more than that, it had been an integral part of Blair's enthusiasm. Jim smiled in the firelight, watching his partner sleep. The younger man looked so child-like when he slept... Nothing like the mature, intelligent man he was when awake.

"You going to stare at me all day?" Blair asked, jolting Jim from his thoughts. The older man's face broke into a loving grin, as he moved to pick up his belongings and prepared to leave.

"Just as long as I can, Chief," Jim murmured quietly. He sat back and watched Blair wake up.

"Hey, Chief?"

Blair was rubbing his eyes now, looking like a little boy again. "Yeah?"

"Do you know anything about Christian stories?"

His partner looked at him strangely. "A little. Why?"

"Just hoping you could clear something up for me..."

* * *

"His name was St. James of the Lepers," Blair was explaining as they headed back toward the truck. A tow truck had been called, and they were going to be pushing it to get back to the old Ford in time to catch them.

"The legend goes that he was a rich man, well known for his contributions to the poor and his good deeds. One day, he found a leper on the side of the road on his way to Jerusalem, and was so moved by the young man's plight that he agreed to take him home and nurse him."

Jim smiled. He had been interested to find that the saint had his name, but now, meeting a young man in difficult straits and taking him home to care for him...?

"Anyway, he took the young man home and gave him his bed."

"What did his wife have to say about that?" Jim wondered amusedly.

"She was full of the 'hospitality of Christ,'" Blair answered easily. "She just let him do what he needed to."

"Wish  _my_  wife had been like that," Jim murmured with a chuckle.

"You want to hear the rest of the story, or what?" Blair returned, mock-irritated.

"Go on, Teach," Jim laughed. "I'm listening."

"Well, St. James tended the leper for two years, at which time the leper died. James felt such brotherhood for the leper, who had become his friend during those two years, that he was overcome by grief, and curled up beside his friend, and died."

Jim kept walking, but his mind was elsewhere.

"Jim?"

The detective pulled himself from his musings. "So, um... Why was he called James of the Lepers? There was only one leper, after all."

"St. James was said to appear to lepers in the hours and days before their deaths, to give them comfort in their transition to the afterlife. In the thirteenth century, he was even supposed to have cured a young leper who was the son of a widow in a poor part of London. The leper, once cured, went on to devote his life to Christ, and became a wellknown philosopher. It's said that the leper-turned-philosopher reminded St. James so of his lost friend that the saint appeared to the young man every night, and curled up beside him to watch over him while he slept."

A wellknown philosopher? Jim smiled. Okay, so the story wasn't  _too_  like him and his lover, but he did identify--perhaps a little too well--with St. James's desire to die with his friend. If Blair died...

"Jim!?"

The detective looked up in surprise, to find that they had reached the truck. "What?"

"I  _said,_  can you hear the tow truck coming?"

Jim listened for a moment, nodding. "They're a while away, though."

Blair watched his lover closely, as Jim seemed to drift off into his own little world again. "Hey, Jim? You okay?"

The smile was sad and thoughtful, and Blair didn't really know what to make of it. "Yeah, I'm fine, Chief. Just thinking."

"About?"

"Saint James."

Blair smiled at that. "I never took you for a historian, Jim."

"Funny," his partner threw back in amusement. "No... Just thinking about..." Jim suddenly felt incredibly stupid. Come on, Jimmy, he told himself. One little story on Halloween, and you're suddenly thinking about how hard it would be if...

"Here comes the tow truck," Blair announced, saving Jim from having to answer.

 

The driver of that tow truck was a huge hulk of a man, easily Simon's height, but a good deal more burly than the well-built police captain. The man smiled broadly as he slipped out into the snow. "Great day to be trapped in a snowdrift, huh?"

Jim grinned back. "We just want somewhere with a heater and a cup of coffee."

"I understand," the driver replied. "My name's Christopher." He looked at Jim's truck appraisingly. "Is it still running?"

Jim nodded. "The engine's fine. We can take a look at the back wheels once we get it out."

Christopher nodded as well, and set about manouvering his tow truck to pull the smaller vehicle free from the drift.

"So," Christopher yelled over the sound of the winch. "I know you didn't run the engine all night--you'd be dead if you did--how'd you stay warm?"

Jim kept his eyes on his beloved pickup. "We found a church a little ways into the woods," he replied, missing the confused look on the larger man's face. "It looked like it had been used by a few lonely stragglers before."

"What was the name of that church?" Christopher asked.

This time, it was Blair who answered. "They named it after you, actually," he laughed. "Saint Christopher's."

The tow truck operator looked at them both a little strangely for a moment, then smiled--a secret smile that told Blair Christopher knew something he didn't.

"Well, I'm glad you found a place to stay," he said after a moment. "Nice to find a church in the darkness, huh?"

Jim nodded. "Yeah, it was just what we needed." His next words spoke to his distracted state, as he watched his pickup finally pull free of the snow. "Interesting windows, too."

Christopher grinned knowingly again, and moved forward to stop the winch as the truck came closer to the road it had veered from. "Yeah well," he answered cryptically. "You see what you want to see in those windows, huh?"

Blair looked at him, but wasn't sure how to answer.

"Looks like your wheels are in fine shape," Christopher announced, turning back to Jim with a smile. "Why don't we say twenty bucks and call it good?"

Jim slipped into his truck and started it up, leaving the pickup running as he settled up with the man.

"You two drive safe, okay?" Christopher called, as Jim manouvered the truck onto the road and prepared to drive away. "No more dodging deer!"

Blair smiled and waved in response.

But Christopher's reaction to that old church stayed in his mind the entire weekend in Vancouver...

* * *

**_November 2, 1997  
3:03 pm_ **

"Hey, Jim, stop a minute."

Jim looked around curiously, but stopped the truck on the now-dry backroad anyway. "What is it, Chief?"

"That's the drift we got caught in on Friday, isn't it?"

"Yeah, so?"

Blair opened his door and dropped down to the road. "I want to check something out."

Jim followed his partner through the woods, and knew Blair was looking for the old church. Maybe the anthropologist wanted to get a look at those stained glass windows himself.

It took them forty minutes in the better weather, and Jim was  _sure_  they were in the clearing where the church had stood...

But there was nothing but snow-covered ground here now.

"This is where it was, Jim," Blair asked, making sure that Jim was seeing what he was. "Right?"

"There's nothing here now." Jim wasn't refuting his partner's claim, simply wondering at how an entire church could simply disappear over the course of a weekend. He was scanning the snow, looking for the improbable signs of demolition when his eyes were caught and held by a small shiny object on the ground.

He walked over and picked it up, staring at it thoughtfully for a moment before bringing it over for Blair to look at.

"What is it?" Blair asked, pulling the small medallion on its chain from his partner's puzzled grasp.

"I don't know, Chief... A gift, maybe?"

Blair looked at the silver medallion closely. The characters depicted there were obvious to him. Obvious, and a little strange.

St. James and his leper sat on their horse, riding toward Jerusalem.

* * *  
The End


End file.
